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Video Blog: Let’s talk IT recruiting trends and the top six mistakes you need to avoid of when it comes to finding top IT talent.

It’s a candidate’s market.

What we’re seeing right now is that the IT unemployment rate in western Pennsylvania is currently at less than 2%. When you move candidates slowly through an interview process, you are losing brand image, and you’re losing out on top talent. Improving your recruiting efforts and making sure that you’re moving quickly and efficiently through that process is going to ensure that you’re filling your positions with top IT talent.

Top 10% of IT talent is gone within 10 days.

Not only is the unemployment rate very low but we are seeing that when you start an interview process, the top 10% of talent is actually gone within the first 10 days of your recruiting efforts. You want to make sure that you are fitting the personality to the job requirements that you’re looking for and moving quickly through your process to ensure that you’re hiring those top IT candidates. Move too slow and you’ll lose out on your candidate pool and it’s going to diminish your ability to be able to fill the position with the best candidates possible.

Have solid requirements set on “must haves” vs. “nice to have.”

A way to ensure that you’re bringing on top IT talent quickly is to make sure that during the interview process you are always reevaluating your needs and clearly defining what your must-haves are verses your nice-to-haves. If you’re looking for somebody with certain technical skills and those are your top priority, you want to make sure that that is the first step in your interview process to make sure that you can bring on top talent quickly and efficiently.

Stop waiting for a purple squirrel or unicorn.

You want to ensure during the interview process that you are not looking for a purple squirrel or a unicorn that, as we all know, doesn’t exist. During the interview process as you’re speaking with candidates, you’ll want to combat your pickiness and look at candidates maybe in a greater salary range. That’s something that OpenArc can help discuss with you. We can talk to you about market trends and industry trends that we’re seeing in the region to ensure that you’re bringing on the top talent and making sure that the candidate you want exists.

A longer interview process doesn’t produce better results.

A common misconception with recruiters and hiring managers is that a longer interview process actually yields better results, and what we’re seeing is the opposite. Right now, currently the top two to three candidates are most likely going to be disengaged from your opportunity within the first seven days.

If you have a five-step interview process you’re going to lose out on top-qualified IT talent very quickly. At OpenArc, we can help talk to you about your interview process. We can help streamline it. We can help talk to you about what’s most efficient and has worked very well with our clients to ensure they’re getting the top talent very quickly.

You’re losing revenue every day a position remains vacant.

Finally, what we believe is most important step to help speed up your recruiting efforts is that you are continually engaging with candidates in the market and always looking for that top talent. Something that greatly affects our clients is, the longer a position remains vacant it can negatively impact your revenue, your productivity, and your return on investment, not only for your specific department but for the company overall. Working with OpenArc, we can help engage during the two-week wait period.

If someone has resigned, we can help get candidates in as quickly to start that interview process and to make sure that there isn’t a lag between someone leaving and a new person starting. This is going to be the most effective tool in helping you stay on track with your goals and your projects and help the company overall.

I’m happy to answer any questions that I can for you about your specific hiring process and how OpenArc can help you. Please feel free to reach me at lindsay at openarc dot net.